


Starts with a Spark

by protectmikasamuels2017



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Childhood Friends, Childhood Friends, Developing Relationship, Feels, Gen, Kid Jughead Jones, Not Canon Compliant, Other characters mentioned - Freeform, kid archie andrews, kid betty cooper
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-05
Updated: 2020-08-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:01:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25737697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/protectmikasamuels2017/pseuds/protectmikasamuels2017
Summary: It all started because she wanted Archie to herself, but once she started she found that she couldn't stop. And she didn't like what she saw. So instead she decided to help.Or:How Betty helps Jughead avoid juvie and starts a lifelong friendship (and perhaps more).
Relationships: Betty Cooper & Jughead Jones, Betty Cooper & Kevin Keller, Betty Cooper/Jughead Jones
Comments: 2
Kudos: 41





	Starts with a Spark

Betty had had a crush on Archie for as long as she could remember. As a result she always tried to get closer to him, but every attempt had found an obstacle in the form of Jughead Jones.

Jughead was Archie’s best friend. According to Mr Andrews and Mr Jones they’ve known each other since the day they were born. They knew everything about each other and Jughead always came first to Archie. He had the number one spot in Archie’s life. 

And she was pretty jealous. Jughead hung onto Archie like he was a King. And he couldn’t see that he was stopping Betty from being his Queen. Or he did see and just didn’t care.

So she decided to do what her mom would do and get rid of an obstacle in her way. To do that she started to watch Jughead like a hawk and come up with a plan from there. 

She watched him in class, on the playground, whenever they were over at Archie’s house together. She watched him at Pop’s diner, the Drive In, basically everywhere that they came across each other. She watched. And she didn’t like what she saw.

Because people were treating Jughead really badly. And he didn’t do anything wrong. She saw the looks that people gave him, the sneers so similar to the ones her mom wore. She heard the whispers and what they said made her stomach feel funny. Not in a good funny way, but a really bad one. They were all so cruel to him and for no reason at all.

Because Jughead didn’t like sports, he didn't like hanging out with other people much. It was just her and Archie and sometimes Kevin that he hung out with. Everyone else always teased him and was mean to him and Jason and Reggie and their friends always tried to beat him up so Jughead avoided that. And she understood. She didn’t like hanging out around Cheryl Blossom because Cheryl always made her feel like she was nothing but a bug in her eyes.

And the teachers didn’t understand. Or really they just chose to ignore it. They knew that Jughead was being bullied but they never did anything to help him. When Jughead had gotten into a fight with Reggie because Reggie had tried to take his hat away and had hit first, Jughead was the one to get detention while Reggie didn't get in trouble at all. Even when Betty and Kevin had tried to tell Mrs. Adams that it was Reggie’s fault.

Jughead always got the blame for whenever something went wrong. Whenever someone could blame him, he was punished. Even when there was no possible way for him to have done the thing that they were punishing him for. And the punishment for him was always so much worse than it would be for her or Archie or anyone else in the class. The only people who didn’t treat him badly were her, Archie, Kevin, Archie’s parents and Pop Tate. Everyone else was always so mean to him. Even her mom was. And he didn’t deserve it. He didn’t deserve any of it.

Because whenever Jughead wasn’t hogging Archie, he was kind. The kindest person Betty had ever met really. He was kind and thoughtful and always shared his books and colours and games with her (not his food though, the one thing that Jughead wasn’t willing to share was food). He helped Archie with his math homework and her with her science homework without complaining. He gave Ethel a secret Valentine when she had been crying that no one else had given her one. He was just the absolute sweetest big brother to Jellybean too. And he was always polite to adults. Even when adults weren’t the nicest to him.

So maybe that was why Jughead was always so attached to Archie. Archie was after all the only person who has always been kind to Jughead, for as long as she could remember. Even she hadn’t been the nicest to him before she had started watching him.

So she discarded her original plan about getting Archie all to herself. Because as much as she wanted to be Archie’s Queen, Jughead clearly needed him to be his Knight in shining armour even more.

And she made another plan. One to help Jughead as much as she could.

X

The matches were lying on the ground at the edge of the playground. Jughead had been the one to spot them when the three of them had been playing together. It was supposed to be just him and Archie but then Archie had invited Betty to come and play with them when Cheryl Blossom had excluded her from her new all-girls club that she had made. He didn’t mind as much as he would have a few weeks ago. Betty was slowly growing on him. He still didn’t want her in his treehouse or at his and Archie’s sleepovers, but he could play with her and not get annoyed. 

So they had been sitting up on the wall together while they argued over what game to play when he had noticed them out of the corner of his eye. Jumping down, he wandered over for a closer look and found that they were a box of matches, full to the brim.

He had never seen matches before really. Both of his parents had lighters that they kept on their persons and both him and Jellybean had been sternly warned never to go near them. Mr Andrews had a lighter too that he kept locked away in a drawer along with lighter fluid and other things that him and Mrs A had deemed ‘dangerous’. He’s seen other people use them rarely, but he’s never seen them up close.

“Are those matches?” Betty asked as she and Archie came up behind him.

“Yeah,” Jughead confirmed, “someone must have thrown them over the wall or dropped them or something.”

“I’ve never seen matches up close before” Archie said in fascination as he and Betty leant forward for a better look.

“Me neither” him and Betty answered at the same time and looked at each other in surprise, blinking. Archie as usual didn’t notice as he was looking around to see if anyone else was watching them. Satisfied that no one was watching he leant closer and eagerly whispered:

“Do you guys want to try them out?”

Well that was much better than sitting on the wall. And he always wanted to see how matches worked.

So the three of them carefully snuck back inside and ran down to the boys toilets, which was always emptier than the girls were. Once they locked themselves inside, Jughead eagerly opened up the box of matches and lit the first one.

It was so exciting to see the flame burn brightly and judging by the excited looks on the other’s faces they felt the same way. Giddy, he quickly passed the box of matches into Archie’s waiting hands so he could have a turn.

He almost lost count of how long the break had gone on, he had been so absorbed in what they were doing. But he guessed that they must have been missing for a while and that the teachers had noticed. Eventually they must have started looking for them because the next thing he knew he was holding the box again for his turn when there was a knocking on the door and Ms Connelly’s voice called through.

“What’s going on? Who’s in there?”

He exchanged a panicked look with Betty before the girl moved faster than he had ever seen anyone move in his life and by the time their teacher had opened the door Betty had snatched the box of matches out of Jughead’s hands and had flung a bunch of toilet paper down on top of their used matches floating in the toilet water. She was just pulling the handle to flush them when their teacher appeared in the doorway.

“What’s going on here?” Ms Connelly said frowning at Betty and Archie before turning to glare at him. She really didn’t like him because she had gotten into some sort of fight with his mum and ever since then she’s been mean to him.

He’s used to it.

“I got a nosebleed,” Betty said quickly, causing both him and Archie to turn around and stare at her. But she kept her eyes straight at their teacher.

“I got a nosebleed,” she repeated. “And Archie and Jughead brought me in here to help me clean up because it’s much quieter here than in the girls toilets. And I guess we lost track of time, I’m sorry.”

For a long moment Ms Connelly just stood and stared at each of them carefully taking in the scene before her. But they hadn’t dropped any matches on the ground for her to find and Betty had already flushed away the evidence. And he couldn’t see the box of matches anywhere in sight. He had no idea what she had done with it but it was nowhere to be found.

Finally their teacher spoke again. “You got a nosebleed?” she asked slowly like she didn’t believe Betty.

“Yes” Betty lied, “but Archie and Jughead helped me and I’m all better now.”

Jughead wasn’t sure if Ms Connelly actually believed Betty or not, but there was nothing about the scene that said they were doing anything else. If he still had the box of matches in his hand then that would have been a different story altogether but he didn’t.

“Go back outside the three of you” she said eventually. “Recess will be over in a few minutes anyway.”

“Yes Ms” they all answered before moving out, Jughead’s legs feeling like they were made of jelly.

They quickly ran out of the bathroom like the entire room and their teacher was on fire and went back to their spot by the wall which was still unclaimed. Scrambling up on top of it quickly they watched as Ms Connelly looked at them suspiciously from the school door before turning away.

Acting quickly, Betty then fished the box of matches out of her sock and Archie and him both watched as she carefully dropped the box over the wall outside the school, taking care that no one saw what she was doing.

“We forget about them,” she said sternly. “We’ve never seen them before. We got lucky just now with Ms Connelly, let’s not try our luck even more.”

All Jughead could do was nod while Archie mirrored him.

Even fifteen minutes later when the bell rang and they had to go back inside his legs still felt pretty weird. Still like they were made of jelly.

X

Even as a child he had understood that Betty had done him a massive favour back then. It was only when he looked back on that particular memory during a lonely night at the Drive In, searching for something in his mind to write about that he truly got how big it was. With all the knowledge and experience that he had now about how the world worked and how it saw him, he understood that Betty had done more than save him from a yelling from all the teachers. She had also saved him from a potential suspension or expulsion from school. Maybe even a juvie record.

X

Two days later Jughead sat down beside Betty at lunch, leaving a decent amount of space between them.

It was just the two of them today. Archie was sick with a stomach bug so Mr Andrews was keeping him at home. 

Betty was just nibbling on her sandwiches, head down and avoiding Ms Connelly's sharp gaze at them in the playground and canteen. Ever since she had caught them in the bathroom she had been giving them the stink eye, clearly suspecting that they had been up to something. But she couldn’t prove it and she didn’t seem to have told their parents either so he didn’t care much. Adults had always looked at him like that, his dad just told him to ignore it.

 _‘They want you to fight back Jug,’_ his dad had told him once after he had spent an hour yelling at his teachers for claiming that he cheated on a math test. _‘Don’t ever rise to it ok, they just want an excuse to label you as a bad kid. Don’t give it to them, do you hear me?’_

So he just ignored it now whenever anyone said bad things about him, but he couldn’t help feeling bad that Betty had been dragged into it just because she lied for him. Why she did it was what he didn’t know.

Betty didn’t say anything as he settled down besides her. She gave him a small smile but then diverted her attention back to her food. For a little bit it was just silence, which they were both perfectly happy with. Not like Archie who always had to be doing or talking about something, but soon enough his curiosity got the better of him.

“Why’d you lie?”

That got Betty to look up from her food and fix him with a wide-eyed stare.

“Hmm?”

“Why did you lie about what happened in the bathroom?” he frowned like he didn’t understand.

“Because only you would have gotten the blame” she said wisely.

“Huh?” he frowned. He had a pretty good idea what would have happened to him if he had been caught by Ms Connelly with the matches alone but surely Betty didn’t know? Not even Archie seemed to realise the different standards held for the two of them.

“I see the way everyone treats you” Betty explained. “They’re always so mean to you even when you’re being nice to them. Even grown-ups. And the teachers don’t listen to you either. They always blame you whenever something bad happens. Even when you’re being bullied. I knew that if we were caught with the matches then you would get in the most trouble even if me and Archie tried to say it was our fault. And I didn’t want you getting in trouble. And everyone always believes me, even when I lie.”

Jughead blinked not knowing what to say. He had no idea that Betty had paid such attention to him or that she cared so much about him. When they had first started hanging out with Archie she had acted like she wanted him as far away from her and Archie as possible. When did she start liking him enough to care if he got in trouble and to lie to a teacher for him? 

Maybe Archie wasn’t his only friend anymore.

X

Jughead fell silent after her explanation and Betty slowly turned her attention back to her own lunch when the sound of crinkling paper turned her gaze back towards her beanie wearing friend.

She felt her eyes widen as Jughead carefully broke his chocolate bar in half and placed one half on top of her lunchbox lid.

Jughead was sharing her food with her. Jughead never shared food with anyone who wasn’t Archie or Jellybean. Suddenly she felt like something very important had just taken place. That she had finally earned her way into Jughead’s affections.

She wanted to hug him. She wanted to hold his hand. But she knew that he disliked affection like that just as much as he disliked sharing food. And she wasn’t willing to destroy the connection that she had just made so she settled for inching closer to Jughead but still leaving a tiny bit of space between them so he wouldn’t feel uncomfortable. He looked at her funny, but he didn’t move away.

Beaming, she settled down to finish her lunch, happily ignoring Cheryl’s snide remarks about them.

X

Jughead wasn’t like all the other boys in Betty’s class. He preferred books to sports, horror films to cartoons. He could eat more than Betty had ever seen anyone eat in her life and still have room for more. He wrote really strange stories that were really interesting and the kind that you read over and over looking for secret hints hidden in them. He loved his beanie more than he loved his own life and had an unhealthy addiction to Pop’s.

He was also one of Betty’s closest friends and she was his second best friend after Archie of course. They teamed up together when they had been left out of the Blossom twins parties. They always went to the library together every Saturday as their own special outings, just the two of them. He taught her tricks on an old skateboard that one of his dad’s friends with a snake jacket had given him while she taught him how to play both the violin and keyboard that her mother had insisted she learn. They teamed up against Archie when it came to movie nights together.

And when they entered high school together, he was the one who comforted her when she was upset over not making the River Vixens. She was the one he had told about the bullying that Jason Blossom and Reggie Mantle had gotten the football team to enact on him. And he knew that she was the one who had reported the massive party that Reggie held in his house a week later that got most of the football team arrested and forced to complete community service. (Gallons of alcohol, more drugs then you would expect to find in a cartel and not a single person legal. She had thrown the blame for the party being blown at her mother and her mom had printed an article slamming the Mantle family with a little bit of digging at the Blossoms thrown in for good measure.)

The two of them had revived the Blue and Gold and made it their own with a little help from Kevin in the form of a gossip column. They sat together at lunch and any class they had together. He had let her practice her dancing skills with him when she had been worried about any upcoming dances. He had helped her with her application for her internship and she had handed in some of his work to her superiors who had been very impressed with his talent.

And the day before they were to go back to school to start their sophomore year, Kevin mentioned a very surprising fact.

“You know, I actually can’t remember the last time that you mentioned Archie. I mean in a crush way, not a friendship way. Did something ever happen there that you’re not telling me about?”

“Oh” Betty stopped rummaging in a drawer for a top to wear in surprise. It was true, while her and Archie still talked and they were still friends, she couldn’t remember the last time that she had hung out with him or talked or even thought about him where her stomach flipped in excitement and nerves.

Huh. At some point her crush on Archie had completely disappeared. And she had never even noticed. Huh.

“Nothing happened” she said while she yanked her t-shirt over her head. “It just went away I guess. I can’t even remember the last time I thought about him like that.”

“Seriously?!” Kevin snorted, “Barchie dies like that? That’s disappointing. I was rooting for you two, you really did seem endgame, but apparently it went out with a whimper, not a bang.”

“Shut up Kev” she laughed as she joined him on her bed.

“So is there someone new?” he asked just as her phone buzzed with a text message from Jughead.

“No, not really” she said while reading the text Jughead sent, promising her that he’d be at Pop’s to catch up later. He had attached a cat picture to it and she couldn’t help the smile that broke out as she looked at it.

“So who’s the man making you smile like a loon?” Kevin teased. “Did you meet a guy in New York that you’re not telling me about?”

“It’s just Jughead” she laughed as she quickly texted back a reply. “We’re meeting up at Pop’s later to catch up. I gave some of his stories to my superiors and they liked it a lot. I think they might be interested in publishing it.”

“Oh, imagine” Kevin sighed, “I can just picture what the dedication to that book would be: _‘to my dearest friend Betty who encouraged my talent. And who I secretly in love with.’_ ”

“Kevin!” she laughed, hitting him with a pillow while he laughed and tried to dodge the assault unsuccessfully. Eventually she ran out steam and he flopped down on the bed beside him laughing.

She missed this. She missed him.

Beside her her phone buzzed again with a message from Jughead and she tried hard to ignore the warm feeling that she had gotten at seeing his name on her screen.

She had missed him too. She had missed him a lot.

**Author's Note:**

> I only intended for this to be a cute platonic Jughead and Betty friendship thing but somehow without me noticing its turned into a bughead kid!fic but its still the cutest thing I've ever written so I'm happy. But now that I have written something so fluffy I kinda want to add drama to it. Well if I do then it'll be in the form of another one-shot, because I know myself and long multi-chaptered fics aren't my thing.
> 
> I hope you like it and please leave a comment, I love comments!


End file.
